Page 35 of Glow of the Everflame

Destroy.

Thevoicehad changed.

Focused.

As if it sensed a threat and was protecting its host. It prowled inside me, infecting my veins with a searing heat. My hands twitched with an ache to give in to its ruthless call.

Far away, Sorae was downright apoplectic.

“No,” I said quietly, pleading with thevoice, the gryvern, and my own feral wrath to curb their bloodthirst. I couldn’t kill him—not now, not yet.

“Enough talking, Diem,” Luther stalked in front of me. An orb of pulsating light formed in one palm, a barbed knot of shadow in the other. “Use your magic, or I attack.”

My own fingers contracted at the sight of his, yearning to respond in kind.

Destroy.

“You don’t get to use my name, remember?” I hissed. “I’mYour Majestyto you.”

“Make me,Diem.” He flicked his wrist and a spear of darkness launched in my direction. I barely lunged away before it sliced into the wall behind me.

“You could have killed me,” I shouted.

“So defend yourself.”

I reached to my thigh to pull my blade. A thorny black vine whipped at my hand, sending the knife tumbling out of my reach.

“No weapons. Only magic.”

“I told you, I don’t have m—”

A cloud of glowing scattershot rocketed toward me. I yelped and fell to my knees just in time for the sizzling points of light to sail above my head.

“Stop pretending. Get up and defend yourself.”

“I’m not pretending. I—shit!”

I rolled on my hip a split second before a shadowy axe sliced through the space I’d been sitting, leaving a jagged crevice in the stone floor.

“So many lies,” Luther tutted. “Next, you’ll try to claim you didn’t kiss me.”

“I didn’t,” I snapped. “Youkissedme. I was an innocent bystander.”

“There was nothinginnocentabout that kiss. From either of us.” He wet his lips, and heat coursed through my blood. “I think I’ve still got a few traces of your bloody handprints on my skin, if you’d like me to prove it.”

Destroy.

I lunged for my fallen dagger and hurled it at his chest. Luther sighed and twitched his wrist. A wall of pale blue light appeared around him, the blade bouncing harmlessly off its edge.

“This is beneath you,” he muttered, rolling his eyes.

Herolled his fucking eyes.

Destroy. Destroy.

I climbed to my feet, grinding my teeth nearly to dust. “I’m done with this conversation.” I started to stomp past him, but an explosion of glittering sparks sent me stumbling back with a shout.

“Use your magic. I know it’s there, I can feel it building around you. The light burns and the darkness bites—call to them, craft them into the weapons you need.”

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